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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Fact of the Day for September 16, 1999
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What star makes a spinning pinwheel of dust?
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Images of a star called Wolf-Rayet 104 reveal that it is surrounded
by a spinning, spiral pinwheel of dust that is larger than our entire
solar system.
Wolf-Rayet stars are very bright, blue stars, so hot that the
pressure of their own light causes their outer layers to fly off into
space. But normally, these stars do not generate dust. Why does
WR-104 create a spinning spiral of dust?
According to the model that best explains it, WR-104 is actually a
double star, and the smaller companion generates its own hot gases.
Where the two stars' gas outflows meet, dust can form. As the two
stars orbit around each other, the dust flies off in a spiral, like
water from a spinning lawn sprinkler.
More about Wolf-Rayet 104, with animated pictures:
http://isi.ssl.berkeley.edu/wr104.html
A larger picture of WR-104:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990409.html
More Cool Facts about stars:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/01.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/06/04.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/10/15.html
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Copyright (c) 1999, The Learning Kingdom, Inc.
http://www.LearningKingdom.com
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